BEING A DISCIPLE OF MINH LY DAO
A sermon delivered on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month, year Nham Dan (8 February 1962), by Minh Hanh.
Summary
The author addresses a question every disciple eventually asks: what does it actually mean, in daily practice, to live as a proper Minh Ly disciple? He organizes his talk around three questions: why do we come to follow Minh Ly Dao; what is the purpose of joining it; and what are our duties, both in worldly life and within the faith.
I. Why do we follow Minh Ly Dao? Outwardly, each person’s path to the faith looks accidental — one man is drawn in after witnessing an orderly funeral rite; another is charmed that Tam Tong Mieu’s services are chanted in plain, comprehensible Vietnamese rather than an unfamiliar liturgical language; another simply wanders in already seeking a path and finds himself moved by a sermon. But the author argues this apparent randomness is illusory. Just as billions of stars move through the universe on fixed orbits without ever colliding, human life too is governed throughout by the law of Cause and Effect, and nothing that shapes our destiny — least of all so consequential a matter as which faith we join — happens by chance. He proposes that fellow disciples were very likely bound to one another already in past lives, sharing the same ideal or the same faith, and that karmic destiny has now brought these same souls together, born around the same time and place, to meet again at the founding of Minh Ly Dao and take up the work the Immortals had already assigned them — just as the Buddha’s disciples in earlier lives were said to have incarnated together to help him found his own teaching. We should therefore never treat our membership casually, as something to pick up or discard on a whim; our cultivation did not begin in this lifetime and will not conclude in it either.
II. What is the purpose of joining? Everyone says “to cultivate,” but the author insists this must be broken into two concrete dimensions. First, the visible dimension (tu duc, “cultivating merit,” what Buddhism calls tu phuoc): tending to the temple, helping Tam Tong Mieu grow, and spreading scripture and moral teaching — since ordinary people first perceive the Dao through its visible form, the temple, just as the soul is first perceived through the visible body. New disciples typically start here, serving the temple and helping propagate the teaching, not for any material benefit but purely to help others glimpse a portion of the formless Way. Second, the invisible dimension (tu tam, “cultivating the mind,” what Buddhism calls tu hue): once one grasps the importance of the Way of Non-Action, one turns to purifying and illuminating one’s own mind — likened to being one lamp among many in the house of the faith: if the lamps burn dim, the house stays dark; outsiders judge the whole religion by the conduct of its own disciples, so cultivating one’s own mind is itself a duty to the faith, not merely a private matter. He defines “tu” as correcting oneself, cultivating virtue, extinguishing desire, and clearing away the dust that obscures the mind’s natural brightness, summarizing the Buddha’s teaching in the four-line verse: Do no evil; do all that is good; purify one’s own intention — this is the teaching of all Buddhas. He explains each clause in turn: doing good creates good karma that not only brings future blessing but actively drives out evil and speeds one’s progress (quoting the Minh Ly Book of Repentance: “no good deed should be passed over, however small — even the smallest is itself a work of merit”); avoiding evil cuts off the karmic bonds that otherwise perpetuate endless rebirth, just as a bitter tree, once planted, cannot simply be wished away — one must stop sowing bad seed to let old karma finally wear itself out; and cultivating one’s temperament means mastering desire and the seven passions so the mind’s natural brightness can shine through. He stresses that hearing the teaching is worthless without actually practicing it — people commonly want to listen without doing, then complain that the Immortals and Buddhas fail to save them.
III. The duties of a Minh Ly disciple. Most disciples are lay practitioners living ordinary household lives, so they carry two sets of duties — worldly and religious.
In worldly life: Toward society, a lay disciple lives outwardly like anyone else; the only real difference is inward — a settled understanding of what is real and what is illusory, freeing one from unworthy cravings and unworthy fears. There is no need to affect visibly “religious” behavior; sincerity matters more than performance. Disciples should strictly keep the Five Precepts, earn their living honestly, practice the “do good / avoid evil / cultivate temperament” formula in daily dealings, fulfill their duties as citizens while staying clear of political entanglements that could cast doubt on the faith, help others as they are able, hold no grudges, harm no one, and always guard their own dignity — never insulting or wishing ill on anyone. A good reputation earned this way spreads on its own, without need of advertisement. Toward family: following Confucius, one of the Three Teachings’ Founders venerated by Minh Ly Dao, filial piety toward parents comes first — for if one claims to revere Heaven and the Buddhas while failing to revere one’s own parents, that reverence is hollow, motivated only by hope of divine favor rather than genuine sincerity. Next comes brotherly affection and harmony among siblings (“brothers are as hands and feet to one another”). Finally, one owes full responsibility toward spouse and children, who are bound to us by karmic ties; fulfilling the duties of spouse and parent is inseparable from religious cultivation itself — one cannot hope to reach the Way of Heaven while failing the Way of Humanity. Raising children means nourishing their minds as much as their bodies: educating them and guiding them toward virtue, so that they in turn may carry Minh Ly Dao forward.
Within the faith: Disciples owe duties to the temple and to fellow believers. Toward the temple: since outsiders judge the invisible Way by its visible embodiment, disciples should help the temple flourish according to their means — through labor or through material support — and should attend regularly on the new and full moon to pray for the well-being of all, both as an act of merit and to absorb the wholesome atmosphere and moral teaching the temple provides; learning from fellow disciples in person often clarifies scripture faster than study alone. Toward fellow disciples, three qualities matter: mutual affection (since disciples, though strangers in this life by blood, are bound by a spiritual tie from past lives even stronger than kinship, and share a single mission to found and preserve the faith — anyone who sows division works against that shared duty and against the will of the Immortals); mutual help (physical needs, but especially emotional and spiritual support — comforting the discouraged, visiting and reciting scripture for the gravely ill, guiding those tempted to drift away, and those more advanced in the teaching should take responsibility for instructing others, since raising the whole community’s understanding is the most important duty of all); and harmony (an organization only endures through unity of purpose — any petty quarrel or division weakens the whole). Most friction, the author notes, comes from misunderstanding rather than real malice: if a fellow disciple’s rough manner offends us, we should remember they too are only an ordinary person still learning to cultivate, and respond with compassionate forgiveness rather than resentment; nine times out of ten, no insult was even intended, and where one truly was, it likely reflects some fault or shortcoming of our own rather than pure malice on the other side.
Conclusion. All Minh Ly disciples are souls bound closely together across many past lives by a shared spiritual tie and a shared duty entrusted by the Immortals to found and preserve this faith; anyone who sows division acts against that trust and will answer for it before the Higher Powers after this life. The author closes by urging fellow believers to weigh what he has said and, where it rings true, to put it into practice, so as to be worthy of the name “Minh Ly disciple” and bring honor to the Way.
With utmost sincerity and faith.
THE PATH OF ACTION (NGHIEP HANH DAO)
A sermon delivered on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month, year Tan Hoi (1971), by Minh Thien.
Summary
“The Path of Action” is the method of liberating the soul from reincarnation through action and work — the easiest of the three classical paths (Action, Wisdom, and Devotion/Faith), open to anyone regardless of special talent. All humanity evolves along this path in some sense, but the ordinary person, driven only by natural instinct, progresses extremely slowly, over countless lifetimes, while the deliberate practitioner, acting with the same kind of effort but with conscious resolve, advances perhaps tenfold faster — sometimes attaining the Way within only a few incarnations. A quick-tempered person, for instance, learns only through repeated failure and suffering to control their temper, whereas someone who has consciously resolved to master it can shed the habit far more quickly. Since every soul is a spark of the Supreme God being drawn inexorably back toward its source, the veil of Ignorance alone keeps most people from perceiving this higher purpose and pursuing it with urgency — like a rudderless boat drifting and bumping against obstacles, compared to one steered deliberately and swiftly toward its destination.
The author traces four successive stages of this path, aligning them with the Book of Changes’ categories of action:
- Acting under compulsion (mien cuong ma lam): early humanity, still close to its animal nature, is driven to act only by raw desire — hunger, comfort, pleasure — since inaction brings want and suffering. Crude as it is, this at least breaks the deeper vice of inertia, since stagnation itself is a kind of death and runs contrary to evolution; desire here serves merely as the whip that gets the horse moving.
- Acting from self-interest, material (chu loi nhi hanh — vat chat): humanity comes to feel that raw appetite is beneath the dignity of a spark of the Supreme, and begins striving instead for higher-seeming goals — wealth, achievement, philanthropy, science, invention — yet still fundamentally in order to reap some reward, whether worldly success, praise, rank, or a favorable rebirth. This describes the ambition of most “advanced” civilization today: still driven by self-interest, merely refined.
- Acting from self-interest, spiritual (chu loi nhi hanh — tinh than): eventually a person tires of this endless, unsatisfied craving — the more one accumulates, the less content one feels, “the higher the fame, the deeper the hardship” — and turns instead to renouncing the world altogether, fleeing to the mountains and forests in search of peace. But this, too, ultimately disappoints: desire does not vanish simply because its objects are physically out of reach; the craving for wealth, beauty, or renown, once deeply rooted in the mind, persists even in solitude.
- Acting with perfect equanimity (an nhien nhi hanh): the practitioner finally realizes that neither withdrawal from the world nor idleness dissolves karma — one must instead remain engaged in worldly action, but entirely without personal stake in its outcome, whether material or spiritual reward, and without concern even for others’ gratitude. A wealthy man, for example, may continue earning as before, but now purely to benefit others rather than himself, remaining as unmoved by profit as a steward collecting revenue on his master’s behalf, rather than his own. The author warns that even the subtler wish to see one’s efforts succeed, or to be thanked and admired for them, is itself still a form of desire binding one to karma; true liberation requires acting purely from conscience, indifferent to gain or loss, praise or blame, honor or humiliation, joy or sorrow, wealth or poverty — content in a palace and equally content in a straw hut, because one no longer prizes or scorns any of it. Only in this settled equanimity does the mind grow calm and clear enough to perceive its true nature, recognize its oneness with the Supreme God, and offer itself up completely in service — like the sun, which simply shines on all without asking anything in return, thereby escaping the chain of Cause and Effect entirely and merging with the Way.
Editorial note: this sermon was drawn from the 14 January 1971 talk given by the late Dinh Phap Minh Thien on the subject of “Les trois sentiers” (“The Three Paths”) by Annie Besant, President of the Theosophical Society. The Path of Action is described as the easiest of the three ways for the soul to escape reincarnation.
With utmost sincerity and faith.